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12 Ways to Increase Website Traffic for Your Business Blog

Here are a few strategies to get you started with your business blog. These insights will drive qualified traffic to your site, which you can capture and convert to new customers.

Traffic strategies for business blogging:

1. Laser like focus on your target customer. Know who your customer is, what they want, and what kind of information they are searching.
2. Content that speaks to challenges and problems faced by reader. Help readers solve real problems, make decisions, and move towards a solution right for them.
3. Inbound links from relevant media sources and trade publications. Attract visitors from places your customers are already, relevant links are the only links you will seek.
4. Promote content not the publications. Instead of pointing to your business blog, connect readers with specific content you've provided as it is relevant with their needs.
5. Find ten stable referral traffic sources. Watch your logs over the months and cultivate ten stable traffic sources by referral. These could be partners, directories, or social media.
6. Write for your readers, not for search engines. Search engine optimization works best on sites with traffic, and you can get that traffic from catering to your human readers first.
7. Improve site stickiness with opt-in. Always give readers a way to get more information, join email alerts, or to give you an email address. Your relevant follow up will keep them returning.
8. Focus on lead generation first. While your blog can be part of your selling process, focus your efforts on attracting the right customers to your site more than anything else. If you try to sell in your blog you'll often push away potential customers, instead just capture and cultivate.
9. Make your RSS feed clear to visitors. Include an RSS link in your meta header, page content, and make it easy for readers to join your feed. This lets readers take you with them, bringing them back to your content more regularly.
10. Let your personality show in every post. It's okay to be you when blogging, however, you do need a corporate policy on the voice your company wants presented. Personality is great as long as it advances company objectives.
    
11. Give something away on your blog for media attention. Your visitors want value, give it to them, and let your trade publications know you are giving things away. This gives people reason to visit.
12. Link bait at least once a month. Use top 10 lists, frequently asked questions, or other high value post at least once a month. This again give people reasons to recommend your site and link to you.

For best results implement ALL of these strategies with each of your websites. Choose one per week to focus on as you build site volume. There is no one way to increase website traffic by 1,000 visitors, but there are hundreds of ways to increase traffic by 10.

© 2008 B2B Website Profits, All rights reserved.

Justin Hitt provides any business blogger sustainable strategies for building traffic and increasing sales. Learn more at http://HittPublishingDirect.com/

Posted by Justin Hitt on March 1, 2009 11:11 AM | Permalink

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